Scholastic Book Clubs

Hello, Giraffe Families!

I wanted to let you know that this year, we will be using online orders for the Scholastic Book Clubs. Not only will it save us from using paper for the paper catalogs, but it will also give you lots more variety and selection in the books that are available to order. For every book that you order for your child at home, our class receives bonus points that we can then use to purchase new books for our classroom! Here is how to order:

1. Go to the Scholastic Book Clubs site and click on "Add a Child"
2. Enter your child's name, grade, and then enter our classroom code NB42C to connect to the Giraffe Class.
3. Once you confirm the information, it will bring you to the Book Clubs. Here, you can shop by grade level, by collection, or you can shop the digital flyers. You can also search for specific titles or use the "Book Finder" feature to help you find just right books for your child. 

I will submit any orders we receive as a class once a month, but if there is an order you have placed that you would like delivered ASAP, please let me know so I can submit it for you. All orders will be delivered to school and sent home in your child's backpack on the day we receive them.

I will plan to submit our first order on Friday, November 2nd to ensure they are delivered before our Thanksgiving break. Please let me know if you have any questions. Happy Reading!

What Time Is It?

This week in math, we have been working very hard on telling time. We talked about the two types of clocks: digital (which lists the hour and the minute) and analog (a round clock with an hour hand and a minute hand that point to the time) . 

While many of us have digital clocks on our many devices and around our home, we talked about how many public places like our school, the library, and stores usually have an analog clock, so it is important to learn how to tell time on an analog clock.

On an analog clock, the shorter hand is the hour hand and the longer hand is the minute hand. When reading the hour, we either look to the number the hour hand is pointing to or to the number that is just to the left of the hour hand when it is in between numbers. When reading the minutes, we look at the number the minute hand is pointing to and count by fives from 1 until we reach that number. For example, we would count the minutes on the clock above by starting at 1 (5 minutes) and counting by fives until we reach the 11 (55 minutes). 

This clock is showing us that it is 5:30!

We also learned that each time happens twice a day: once at the am time and once at the pm time. All times between midnight (12:00 am) and noon (12:00 pm) are am times and all the times from noon to midnight are pm times. So, am is early morning and morning and pm is afternoon and night time.

We played some really fun math games on the smart board to help us practice telling time as well as learning which times are am and pm times. You can play these games at home by clicking here:

AM or PM?

Stop The Clock!

Challenge your family members to see who can tell time the fastest!

What Time Is It?

This week in Math, we've been doing a lot of review with concepts we were learning about before vacation. We continued to explore measuring, place value, expanded notation, base-ten blocks, discussing a.m. and p.m., and telling time. One of our favorite activities from this week involved writing a time on a Paper Analog Watches and having our friends read the time!

The giraffes have gotten SO good at telling time and showing the time on an analog clock--who needs digital clocks anyway?? :) 

In addition to the other time games we've  discovered, Ms. Riley also found this awesome Giraffe Dash Telling Time game--check it out! 

We're Rockin' the Clock

Our latest math unit has a big focus on telling time, so in order to practice, we created a larger-than-life analog clock that has really helped us to understand the components of an analog clock. On our clock, we noticed:

• The hour hand is shorter than the minute hand (Ms. Riley remembers that by looking at the words "hour" and "minute"... the word hour is shorter so it belongs with the shorter hand!) 
• The clock has the numbers 1-12, which stand for the hour. 
• If the minute hand is pointing to one of the numbers, you need to start at the 1 and count by fives until you get to that number in order to figure out the minutes 
• The blue numbers on our clock stand for the quarter hour times. When the minute hand is pointing to the 3, it is quarter after the hour, and when it is pointing to the 9, it is quarter of the next hour
• The orange numbers stand for the half hour times. When the minute hand is pointing to the 6, we are halfway through (or 30 minutes into) the hour, and when it is pointing to the 12, it is an o'clock time or a new hour. 

Our homework this week also involves a lot of work with reading and writing the times on digital and analog clocks. For a fun way to practice telling time, check out these awesome Telling Time Games from Woodlands Resources!